So Not Cinderella (All Day I Think Of You)
by Kokoro-no-Kaji
Summary: 2PM (A.D.T.O.Y) Jase is a Popstar Prince. He met a beautiful girl at a dance and took her home. And then she disappeared. Unable to focus, his body and mind yearn for her like a child crying for candy snatched away. He's going crazy, consumed with thoughts of her. All he can do is think about her, but will he ever find his Cinderella when she failed to leave behind a glass slipper?


**Fandom**: [2PM] A.D.T.O.Y - MV  
**Pairings**: Generalized Male-Protagonist {**Mainly Jun.K**} / FemOC  
**Rating**: PG-13 (sexual allusions)

**Summary**: Jase is a Popstar Prince. He met a beautiful girl at a dance in his hometown kingdom and took her home with him. And then she disappeared. Unable to focus, his body and mind yearn for her like a child aimlessly crying for candy snatched away. He's going crazy, his memory is consumed with thoughts of _her, _every act of the present brings up something from last night and each new remembrance makes him fall deeper and deeper in love and lust. All he can do is think about her, but will he ever find his Cinderella when she failed to leave behind a glass slipper for him to find her with?

**A/N:** I'm actually not sure what category this fits into (notes at the bottom), so I've stuck it here, but I hope you enjoy reading it anyway!

(**Also it is NOT based on real people**, regardless of the fact that a music video is the inspiration. The band's Stage Personas and the characters in the MVs Story are the basis, not the band members themselves).

* * *

_Jase_.

A snap in front of his face woke Jason from his daze.

"Hello, anybody in there?"

Looking up into his best friend's face, Jason pulled a convincing smile across his expression. Nick didn't believe the grin for a second. "Come on, man, what is up with you today?"

Jason laughed. "I'll be fine. I just need some more coffee."

"You're a zombie," Nick replied, handing over the triple shot mocha he'd stuck in the crook of his arm when he'd been forced to snap his fingers in front of Jason's zoned-out face. "I don't think this City _has_ enough coffee to wake you up." Nick took a sip of his own coffee and then added, "Sheila wants me to tell you that you're using that chair incorrectly."

"Is she gonna write me up for abuse of furniture? I'm sure that'll be a lovely addition to my gangster rap sheet," Jason countered. He was sitting on the back of the folding chair with his feet flat on the seat and his elbows balancing his weight on his knees.

Laughing in agreement, Nick said, "Your prison-resume is almost complete. Throw in some drug charges and you'll be ready for the big leagues."

"So what's Sheila really want from me?"

"The folks in charge of the backing screens want you to go over any final adjustments you might want for them, and to go over cues and things again," Nick explained.

Jason groaned and hung his head. "Don't I have people for that?"

"Yeah, you have Sheila. And Me. And like a hundred other people," Nick replied with a shrug. "But you're playing _Madison Square Garden_ tonight, and the crew here wants to talk to the artist directly. So until you man up and tell the world that I write all your songs, you're the one in demand here."

Kicking his best friend as hard as he could while balanced so precariously, Jason said, "When you man up and actually start writing my songs for me I'll be able to take a vacation once in a while!"

Nick turned to head off the empty stage and up to the production office that was currently the center of excitement in the concert preparations. As he did so he asked, "By the way, what happened with that chick you ditched me for at the club last night?"

The sounds of the chair's metal feet scraping awkwardly across the steel floor of the state of the art sound stage made Nick turn around to see his friend falling over himself. He laughed. "What? Did you crash and burn with her? Too bad, she was hot."  
Righting himself, and miraculously salvaging his coffee, Jason replied, "Yeah, crash and burn . . . you could call it that."

"So what happened?" Nick asked, adding, "I mean, last I saw, she looked really into you."

Jason shrugged and sipped his coffee. Nick winced on his behalf. "That bad? Well, use the concert to forget about her. Just remember that in less than six hours there's going to be almost 20 thousand girls screaming your name and dying to get naked with you, not to mention a dozen half naked dancers hanging all over you. I mean, she was hot, but she wasn't _that_ hot."

Shrugging his agreement as he walked with Nick to the tech center in the production office, Jason kept it quiet that he disagreed whole heartedly with his friend. Nick may have been his wing man last night but he had only seen her for a few minutes, and that in the dark disguising light of the club. Chloe was _beautiful_. And Jason couldn't stop thinking about her.

He had it really bad.

After rushing to get ready this morning, telling Mark to step on it so they could get to the venue 'precisely at 2PM' as Sheila wanted, and finding himself with nothing specific or immediate to do, Jason had taken a seat to look out over the stage he would be playing that night. He'd zoned out at the grandeur of it, the sheer scale and prestige of the event. Deep breaths to keep him calm, adrenalin wouldn't be useful until later, and the scent of her perfume had hit him sidelong like an off target baseball; hard and fast, and completely out of the blue.

It must have been on his watch, or maybe his bracelets, but whatever it was, it was intense. It made him crave a shower, to wash her influence away entirely, to get her out of his head, but the thought of his shower at home, the one that wasn't at all free of Chloe's presence, made him think that maybe he would need a cold shower just to survive the day with his dignity intact. He could feel her slim fingers, cold against his skin, trailing up his arm and over the back of his neck as he sat on the empty stage. It was just like when she had first met him, when he'd been losing himself out on the dance floor and she'd tempted him to dance with her.

Jason had actually been fairly depressed when he'd set out with Nick to hit the clubs of his hometown. Eight years into his phenomenal career and he was finally playing the stadium in his backyard, the one that had made him want to be a singer in the first place. The stress of playing his hometown, of playing such a famous venue, and most of all . . . the strange let-down of finding out that Madison Square Garden was just another venue, and on top of that not even the biggest he'd ever played . . . it was all very off-putting. This show hadn't started out with the same sort of magic that many of his others had and that realization had sent him spiraling away into thoughts of himself as horrifically unappreciative, as a failure waiting to happen, as a person numb to Life's pleasures.

Clubbing in the city he'd grown up in should have been the perfect cure, Nick had been the one to recommend it and thus far he'd never been wrong. He hadn't even been wrong about last night. The music had instantly made Jason feel ten thousand times better. Chloe's honest smile had tripled that number in the space of seconds.

Her expression wasn't seductive, or at least it wasn't meant to be. She was here to have fun, to _live_ in the music in the same way that Jason was and that was not the sort of person you just ran into every day of the week. Even in his line of work, there was a startlingly short supply of true audiophiles. Chloe was quite obviously one, the way she moved, the way she could react to the live DJ as if she was anticipating his transitions, the way she was disappointed when she didn't guess the DJ's count just right . . . she could breathe in the music and live off it like plants survived on sunlight.

Nick snapped Jason to attention again as they approached the video programmers. "Yo. The King has arrived," he called, heralding Jason's approach with a sarcastic bow.

Jason kicked him as he passed. Then he sat down at the computer with the head programmer asking, "What do you need?"

"We just want you to personally make sure that these are the right clips in the right order and show the right amount of footage, just for the breaks, we already have your intros and outros queued to the MR playlist, and live footage with be broadcast during your performances."

"Except for the finale," Jason said, making sure that the tech knew that the screens for the last song needed to show montages of the fans shot in the morning's line to get inside.

The tech nodded. "That footage is being shot now, it'll be ready to be edited by about six, and ready for queuing by seven thirty at the latest."

Jason took a sip of his coffee as he listened then he turned his attention to the footage that was designed to give him a few breaks of considerable length during the concert. It was exhausting to be up on stage, singing and dancing continuously under the lights. He needed a few short moments to recharge, to cool off and hydrate himself so that he didn't collapse in front of his fans. The clips were unreleased music videos for older songs that he wasn't going to be performing live but were undisputed fan favorites that no concert could be complete without.

As he was watching the footage roll by, Jason found himself being yanked away from reality by memories that the images of him in a club with a beautiful girl brought up. When he watched himself getting into a sports car with the MV actress, he was reminded of taking Chloe by the hand and leading her out into the air after hours of dancing together in the dark of the club and the rush of the beat. He was reminded of inviting her back to his place for some real food to help thin out the alcohol in her blood and to prevent a hangover. She'd laughed at him, accusing him of using a dumb pick up line on a girl way too good for all that, and then she'd grabbed his hand and brushed off his lapel as she came close to whisper, "I'd _love_ to."

He'd been so caught up in staring into her eyes, and held so tightly by her hand on his suit, that he'd barely managed to signal to the valet to have his car pulled up. He wasn't driving his sports car last night. Nick had insisted that they use Mark, Jason's new chauffeur, to tour the City's night life. Since he could easily send Mark back for Nick, Jason didn't feel any regret at all as he helped Chloe slip inside the backseat. As Chloe looked up at him, waiting expectantly, Jason had ducked inside and told Mark to head for home.

The flash of light as the video reel came to an end woke Jason up to the world around him. His serious expression had the tech worried. Quickly correcting the grim visage he wore to a friendly smile, Jason said, "Yeah, that looks perfect."

He tried to shake off the feeling of Chloe's hand on his, pulling him into the car, as he pulled himself up to follow Nick to whatever his next assignment might be. He could still feel the rush of giddy anticipation from when he'd sidled up to Chloe in the car, had kissed her hand and laid his free one on her knee, sliding it up the bare skin to the hem of her short black-sequin skirt. Jason shivered and tried to drown out the memories by flooding his mouth with the sensation of espresso.

Nick was giving him a look, but he didn't say anything as he glanced toward Sheila shouting at someone across the way. "There's still about an hour before the lights are ready and two before sound check, but I'm guessing that the guys who work the sub-stage platforms are going to want to talk to you soon."

"Doesn't Sheila have memo pads for this?" Jason asked.

"Once upon a time, in a faraway place with elves and unicorns," Nick retorted. "She's actually super pissed that none of the people here are letting her handle anything. I mean you hired her for a reason after all, and that tiger is _not_ someone to mess with." He shivered.

"Let's steer clear of her today, then," Jason said, amused and empathetic.

"Alright then, to the sub-stage it is," Nick said, leading the way to the elevator that would take them down to the area hidden far beneath the structure Jason would be parading across in just over five hours.

The stage tech there looked up as they approached. "Perfect timing! I was just about to call your manager."

"What do you need?" Jason asked as Nick slipped away.

While his best friend was going over the cues for the platform team, the idiotically straightforward notion of 'when I look down dramatically, it means ready to go', Nick went to meet up with Mark. The chauffer was smoking a cigarette as he leaned up against his car in the staff access parking deck. It was out of the way of everyone, but just close enough to get a great view of the chaos that was the line to see his employer's show. The whole spectacle of teenage insanity amused Mark to no end.

"Yo, how's it goin'?" Nick asked, calling Mark's attention away from the screaming fangirls. The portly uncle-like figure of a man laughed as Nick came to lean against the car.

"Same ole, same ole," Mark responded.

"Last night when you picked me up, you said that Jason got that girl home right?"

"Yeah, they couldn't keep their hands off each other on the drive over," Mark affirmed, smiling at the memory. "Why?"

Frowning, Nick said, "He told me that he'd crashed and burned with her, like he never even got her out the door."

"Nah, they were in the back with me alright. If he got burned it wasn't until _after_ they made it inside," Mark told him, adamant.

Nick nodded. "How was he this morning?"

"I've only been working for him two weeks, so I can't really say if he was acting unusual or anything," Mark replied, adding, "But I've still seen him take a few different girls home and this is the first time I've ever seen him come out the next day as anything but cool as a cucumber. He was running late and all kinds of out of sorts. He seemed oaky after a while though, and by the time we got here he was doin' that weird hand thing he does when there's music playin'."

Nick nodded again, saying, "Trade secret here, but ever since he's gotten back from LA, all of the girls he's taken home have been publicity stunts. He got out of a bad relationship that really screwed him up like a month ago, she was just a gold digger, and now his management team wants to make it looks like he wasn't affected at all. This chick was the first one he took home on his own."

"I thought they looked especially cute together," Mark said. He took a drag on his cigarette looking back at the crowd of fangirls before he said, "You think this girl might have been another gold digger?"

Shrugging, Nick said, "Maybe, I don't know. But Jason is not up to snuff today and as his best friend and official publicity mooch, it's my job to figure out what's wrong so he doesn't screw up his career tonight. My wonderful posh lifestyle is on the line here."

Mark laughed, knowing that while it was entirely true that Nick lived off Jason's success, he also was a damn good friend that genuinely cared about Jason's well-being. He didn't know his employer all that well yet, but Mark knew he was certainly growing fond of the superstar.

"I don't think that's it," he mentioned, drawing Nick's attention out of his thoughts. "They were being _cute_ in my back seat, like obnoxious gushing first-date-in-high-school cute; foreheads pressed together, whispering, smiles, giggles, the whole shebang. She was the worst with it, too. They didn't even kiss or anything. Sure, it was a steamy bit of not-quite-kissing, but I mean he had a full blown make-out session with the one from last Tuesday." Mark paused thinking back on the night's events. "And they were talking. Actually, _talking, _too, about real stuff, like that music mumbo-jumbo he's always chattin' my ear off about."

"She kept up with him when he was on a roll?"

Mark shook his head. "_She_ was the one on a roll; the mouth on that one moves a mile a minute, I swear."

Nick was doubly impressed. There weren't very many people in the world who could comprehend music on the level that Jason could. No wonder the poor kid had been stark struck. He was way out of his depth with this chick. If she was half as high on the social ladder as Jason was, that boy had probably been eaten alive once she'd gotten him alone.

"She was precious little thing, gave me a kiss on the cheek for driving them home," Mark mentioned, smiling at the thought. "Like a little kid."

Okay, so maybe Jason wasn't slaughtered by a wily vixen out to steal his soul. Gold digger was still on the list of suspects, but it wasn't likely. She wasn't a publicity stunt either. The girl had been absolutely gorgeous, and if she knew enough about music to keep Jason interested . . . Nick sighed, thinking that his best friend may have really fallen for a girl at last.

Well, he'd fallen for Ashleigh too, but that had been an ill-advised relationship from the outset. Maybe this girl was the same. Or she could be different. Or, Nick suddenly realized, Jason could have been struggling with the same question and accidently chased a nice girl away and was now regretting it sorely.

Whatever the answer was, Nick needed to do something about it quickly. There were only four and a half hours left before Jason walked on stage, and if he was still acting like a lost puppy, well, Nick's precious little lifestyle might just be the first casualty.

"If you see her again, point her in my direction," Nick requested, giving Mark a salute as he went to find Jason.

The popstar was just about finished with the platform technicians when Nick arrived on the scene. As the techs walked away, having gotten all they needed from him, it was clear that Jason had zoned out again. Nick observed his expression carefully. It was a drawn tense thing, it made Jason look gaunt and aching, as if he'd never slept once in his time as a human being.

Nick clapped him on the shoulder. "You are not okay. Time for some grub."

Snapping back into reality, Jason asked, "Is lunch even allowed to be on the schedule?"

"This is New York, baby, food is _always_ on the schedule," Nick retorted dragging him out for something to eat. His first thought was pizza, but the grease wouldn't be good for Jason's pretty-boy pipes, so he looked around for inspiration. A diner caught his eye with 24-hr breakfast and Nick dragged out into the sun through the venue's back door without hesitation.

"We've got about an hour before rehearsal," Nick said as he slid into a booth.

Jason sighed and slid in across from him. "Sheila is going to kill us."

Nick shrugged, calling a waitress over. "Two plates of pancakes, coke for me, hot tea with  
honey for him," he said without consulting a menu. Pancakes were always in demand from anyone sane and hot tea with honey was a singer's only beverage, aside from water, on the day of a show. At least, it was _this_ singer's only beverage. Having placed their order, Nick turned to Jason, folding his hands and saying, "Okay, now really, what is up with you today?"

Knowing full well that Nick would keep badgering him until Sheila came to skin them both alive, Jason decided to cut straight to the point, "Chloe's gone."

"Gone? Like alien abduction, gone? Did you kill her and hide the body? I told you were were supposed to call me for that, you're like the worst at hide and seek. We're gonna have to hide out in Boliva for the next decade as Timo and Che after this aren't we?"

Jason shrugged, only marginally amused by Nick's ridiculous imagination. "She wasn't there when I woke up this morning, didn't leave a note or anything. Kiba was even laying down at the door like he missed her."

"But Kiba liked her, that's a good sign," Nick jumped in. "Dogs are pretty smart like that."

Shrugging again, Jason replied, "Kiba loved her."

The Shiba Inu was usually mistrustful of strangers, prone to hide in the bathroom or under Jason's bed whenever he had someone over. It was only when Nick was the sole guest that Kiba was actually friendly with someone other than his owner. Even when he'd first brought Chloe home, Kiba had run off. He'd been curious enough to stand in the living room until Chloe spotted him and tried to coax him over, but he had run away.

As the night wore on the dog had come closer and closer, inching forward and hiding behind things like a wannabe James Bond. Chloe had pretended not to notice, but Kiba's antics made her smile. And her smile had made Jason smile.

The sound of plates clicking down on the table woke Jason up as he smiled up at their waitress. She poured him his tea and told them not to hesitate to call her over if they needed anything at all. Her hips swayed seductively as she walked away but Jason didn't notice. He was staring at the strawberry topping his pancakes had come with and was lost in thinking about what had happened when they'd gotten to his apartment complex.

As they'd slipped out of the car, Jason had barely remembered to send Mark back for Nick, and Chloe was taking in her surroundings with an impressed grin. Jason had snuck up to put his hand on her hips and bury his face in her neck, the elegant curls of hair that had escaped her bun ticking his cheek. She'd smacked him lightly and twirled around to hold his lapels firmly.

"I still want that supper you promised," she whispered, pulling him a fraction closer as he walked her backwards into his building. "Can you cook waffles? The nice, big and fluffy kind, not the toaster kind."

"I am an _expert_ waffle burning chef," Jason had replied as they'd made it to the elevator. They were in close contact, but not quite so close that Chloe had felt the need to move away when she'd noticed that the elevator operator grinned at them as he pushed the button for Jason's floor without needing to ask.

She pulled Jason out of the elevator with her eyes and the lightest of hands on his shoulders, spinning them around until her back was against the wall beside the elevator and Jason was only inches away. As the elevator doors closed she'd said, "You'd better have strawberries to put on these burnt waffles of yours."

"I even have chocolate syrup and whipped cream if you want them."

"Good," she said, pushing against him with enough force to back him up against the opposite wall. Chloe had let her hand trail along his arm, reaching out to interlock her fingers with his. "Then lead the way," she crooned.

They'd made it through the door and she'd spotted Kiba. Dog and girl had stared at each other while Jason made for the refrigerator. The noise of him setting out the bowl of strawberries and the other sweet treats he possessed at the moment broke the spell and Kiba went skittering away. Chloe came over to sit by him, across the breakfast bar, as he readied his waffle iron. It had been a gag-gift from Nick a few years ago, but it had turned out to be one of Jason's favorite toys.

While he mixed up a quick batch of waffle batter, he'd chatted with Chloe about everything under the sun and stars. Their conversation seemed to have no ebb and flow, just a constant stream of thought provoking statements, a flurry opinions and information that made him never want to stop. When he'd finished with the batter, and was waiting for the iron to heat up fully, he'd tried to feed Chloe a strawberry. She'd accepted it without hesitation. In return, she'd dipped her finger into the bowl of chocolate sauce and held it up for him to lick clean.

The waffles were made, set out, topped to perfection, and half eaten before Kiba decided to poke his nose over the counter to see what exactly was going on up there. He'd slipped on the dismount, his claw scrapping across the counter as his hind legs wobbled and he lost his balance. His paw sent the bowl of strawberries and their sweet, but stain prone juices straight at Chloe's white lace sweater.

Chloe had pulled the more or less ruined article of clothing off right away, licking some of the sweetness off of it as she passed it to Jason to put in the sink for a good long soak. Then she'd licked some of the juice off of her hand as she asked, "Do have anywhere a girl could get herself cleaned up?"

"Of course, right this way," Jason had replied.

Nick stabbed at one of his strawberries, waking him up again. "It's not fair you know," Nick was saying, "All this special treatment you get. These are supposed to cost extra, but I'm sure it's not even going on the tab."

"Being famous has its perks," Jason countered.

"So come on then, dish your dirty secrets," Nick demanded. "I need something good to sell to E! News so I can afford my apartment for another month."

Jason just laughed.

Then Nick sobered and prodded, "Come on, man, this isn't like you. If you don't tell me what happened I'm going to have to go all bromance moment on you and I've already hit my gay quota for the week."

"I'm telling Jack you said that."

Nick shrugged, "Let him puke rainbows on me. I'd take my little brother over an angry Sheila any day, and she is gonna be _pissed_ when she figure out how out of it you are."

Jason leaned back from his food, suddenly anything but hungry.

"Was she like a gold digger or something? Did she clean out your apartment when you were asleep, stealing all your valuables to pawn off to feed her broken family of three kids each different fathers? Is a spy and had to run off on a deadly assignment without notice and might be dying at this very moment?"

The amusement Nick was drawing more and more out of Jason was entirely real, but it didn't help him figure out what was wrong.

"She did steal from me, but nothing that was actually valuable. She just took that stupid VIP pass that Sheila always gives me for you, but since you're just as famous as I am it's not like you need it," Jason explained. "She left all the cash and jewelry and stuff that could actually make her rich."

"So this chick is walkin' around with a VIP pass with my name on it?"

"Well Kiba didn't eat it."

"And she didn't leave anything behind," Nick pressed, hoping for some sort of clue, "Nothing at all to help you find her?"

Jason shook his head, running his fingers through his popstar quaff in a gesture of anxiety that Nick had only seen from him once or twice over the whole course of their friendship. "When I woke up, it was like she'd never even been there."

"Your little heartbreaker is so not Cinderella," Nick sighed, adding, "Which is tragic, because we could really use a glass slipper here." He leaned back, for once in his life utterly at a loss. Nick Fonterra was _never_ at a loss, he had never found himself backed into a corner he couldn't talk his way out of, never met an obstacle that couldn't be bypassed with a bit of schmoozing. This was an entirely new, and a distinctly uncomfortable, experience.

After a long moment of silence that was not nearly as awkward as it could have been, Nick began grasping at straws. It was his only idea and it was a longshot at best. "That VIP pass," he mentioned, "Do you think it was like a souvenir or . . . might she try coming to the concert?"

Jason breathed in deeply, considering his words carefully. "Well, she'd never heard of me, and wasn't a fan of my music until I sat down with her chatting about it. American Mainstream Pop's not really her genre . . . I doubt she'd want to go to the concert."

"Still, she might," Nick pressed. "If she did, you wanna see her again?"

"More than anything."

Jason's reply was immediate, yearning. This girl was in his head, completely taking over his thoughts. Even if he would just be able to see her long enough to realize that she'd run him for a loop without any remorse, it would be closure. Right now he felt unfinished, hanging in the breeze like a door someone had forgotten to close in the midst of nice weather.

"Then I'll find her for you," Nick said.

"How? I don't even have her last name, no phone number, nothing."

Nick waved his concerns away, "I'll find her, don't you worry. You just finish eating, we've got to get back before Sheila notices you're gone."

With Nick's assurances that he'd take care of everything, Jason was able to eat his lunch and order a coffee to go in relative mental peace. He managed to make it through most of the concert rehearsal too. Only when the female dancers had joined him onstage for their parts did his concentration slip away to thoughts of dancing with Chloe. These girls might have been more flexible, more adept at controlling their muscle movements, more precise in their motions, but they didn't have the feel for the music like Chloe did. The dancers moved to the beat, Chloe moved _with_ it.

While Jason was making a fool of himself in rehearsal, Nick went to find the guy in charge of letting the fans in. He made it a point to get the man to instruct every single one of his ticket checking staff to contact him the moment a pretty girl with wavy brown hair presented a special VIP pass that allowed for unconditional venue access. "The pass might be under the name 'Nick Fonterra' but she's my personal guest and I want to know exactly when she gets here," he explained. "Her name's Chloe."

Jason might have been doubtful that Chloe would show for the concert, but Nick couldn't think of any reason in the world why she wouldn't. If she'd left _cash_ out on the counter, but taken the VIP pass that Nick could declare utterly worthless on a moment's notice if he wanted to, she _must_ have hoped that it would get her into the concert. Why she hadn't left Jason a note confused Nick, but he wanted to hear her side of the story before he decided whether or not he should condone the couple.

When Nick arrived to see Jason looking ridiculous in the last of his rehearsal songs he sighed. Clearly this girl was driving his boy crazy, but if she wasn't half so in love as Jason was, Nick would never be able to allow his best friend to get involved any more deeply with her.

"Hey man, it's already time for sound check," Nick announced, handing Jason a water bottle. Rehearsal wasn't half as intense as the concert itself, but there weren't any breaks and it was still tiring.

Jason nodded and compliantly followed Nick back onstage. Sound check at Madison Square Garden was a quick affair, their sound crew knew _exactly_ what they were doing, they were professionals on an entirely different scale than the staff at most American venues.

When everything was as perfect as it was going to get, the stage was vacated, cleaned up and made all perfect and pretty, and then the fans were unleashed to find their seats and fight for the best position on the Arena floor. Meanwhile the rush of energy behind the scenes was hushed a bit, but not in the least subdued. "Clean yourself up," Nick told Jason, passing him a pile of fluffy white towels and leaving him at the door to the showers. "If you take more than an hour, I'm coming in after you, and I'm bringing a camera so I can sell it to MTV."

Alone in the steam of an almost scalding shower, Jason's thoughts were back with Chloe in his apartment's pristine bathroom. She'd asked for a place to clean herself up, so he'd shown her to his spa-like retreat. He'd licked her fingers clean of the strawberry juice Kiba had gotten her covered in, and he'd moved up the underside of her wrist. He'd kissed along her arm sucking the sweetness off her neck, along her jawline. Chloe's arms had found their way around his neck, pulling him to her as she leaned back against the edge of the enormous sink, hands holding onto the sides of his face, fingers tangled in his hair, drawing him closer as she leaned back further and further, her leg lifting up, brushing along his, to steady her balance.

"Can you help me with the zipper?" she asked, tapping her fingers at the base of his neck.

He reached around behind her as her hands trailed down his shirt, tugging at it in subtle motions to expose some skin. Her weight now fully on the counter, Chloe kicked off her high heels as Jason grasped the zipper on her dress and tugged it ever so slowly down. Her hands dipped to play with his belt buckle as his slid black up along her skin to take care of the little clasp still holding her dress together at the top.

Jason had stepped out of his shoes when Chloe undid his belt, stepping closer to her and sliding her along the counter towards the shower as she said, "Oh, no, I think I've ruined your shirt. You should wash it right away."

"I think that can be arranged," Jason had responded as Chloe hooked her legs about his midsection. He hefted her into his arms, leaning her against him and made for the shower. Setting her down carefully just outside the water's reach he turned it on with a reaching hand so that he didn't have to look away from her for a second, but simultaneously didn't drench them both in freezing or scalding water.

Chloe's feet were balanced on his, her toes providing leverage to pull his socks off as she pulled him around by the shirt collar. Her hands trailed down his sides until her thumbs could hook around the belt loops at his hips. He pulled the pin holding her hair up out of its bun and let the soft waves fall down her back as he slipped the thin straps of her dress off her shoulders.

Jason pulled himself out of his dress shirt and the suit jacket he'd worn over it as Chloe reached behind her to test the water. Jason's hands caught her around the waist before she could step away from him. "Come on in," she crooned, letting her dress fall away and her finger trace the muscles on his chest. "The water's fine."

Shivering at the intensity of the memory as it rocked through him, Jason turned the water he was currently showering in as far towards cold as it could go. The temperature change didn't seem to bring him much relief as he nearly drowned in the ecstasy of the night before.

He'd had sex before, and more than once it had been with women who were _very_ good at it, but Chloe has been something else entirely.

When she had climaxed for him . . . it had been the most powerfully satisfying sensation of his entire life.

Giving up on the pre-show shower, Jason dried himself off. As he pulled on the dressy white shirt that composed his first stage costume of the night, he was reminded of the shirt he'd given Chloe to sleep in, of her smell as he'd toweled off her hair, of how they'd went back out to finish their waffles, of how Kiba had looked so sorry and had offered her his favorite toy. He was reminded of how perfect she'd looked wearing his clothes, of just how neatly she fit up against him on the couch as they'd turned a movie on, of her cutely sleepy expression when the movie had ended and he'd carried her to bed with him.

He was reminded of how warm she was next to him.

How empty he felt when he woke up alone. His shirt had been folded neatly at the foot of his bed, the dishes had been washed and put away, his dog was lying out by the door, and there was a missing VIP pass in the space on his dresser. There wasn't a note, almost no evidence she'd even been there to begin with, and zero indication that she might be returning.

Stealing himself with the chill that he'd been feeling that morning as he'd wondered where she'd went, as he'd hung around longer than he should have in case she came back, Jason finished getting dressed for the first part of the concert and made his way back out to the building energy of the staff. They were feeding off the anticipation of the fans, crowding in overhead and screaming their hearts out in fan chants.

Nick could see his friend's tight expression beneath Jason's friendly smile as he sat down for hair and make-up. Checking his phone anxiously, he looked up at where the crowds were jostling about. If this mysterious Miss Chloe didn't make an appearance soon, Jason would have to go onstage without seeing her. And that would be a tragedy.

He was _not_ at his peak as a performer, by any means of measurement, at the moment and it would kill him to know that he might be disappointing his fans. Giving the best show he was capable of was the only thing Jason ever wanted out of life. His career, the fame and fortune aspects of it at least, meant nothing at all to him. He just wanted to make music as good as humanly possible and then share it with as many people as possible.

But regardless of how well he felt he could do, he would be going on stage in ten minutes. The countdown to show time was over and Jason had to get ready for his first appearance. The music pounding above them to greet the fans changed and the Intro movie began to roll as the lights went down. The roar of the crowd changed gear, from steady chants to psychotic screams.

Jason was led over to his first platform, his mic was set in place and he was warned for the fifth time that the swift uplift would send him flying upward and that if he jumped of the platform before he was thrown he would be able to better control his landing. Jason nodded and brushed off his helpers.

He would be propelled up onto the stage in a matter of minutes, he needed to focus.

Unfortunately every time he closed his eyes, he could feel Chloe's hands running over his skin as he stared into the dark. His lungs contracted as imagined swirls of her perfume muddled his senses. His knees went weak and a chill ran across his shoulder blades.

And then the platform he was crouching on began to rise at phenomenal speed.

Righting himself with the quick instincts he'd honed over his career, Jason jumped into the music, bleeding himself into the lyrics, the beat, the choreography.

Meanwhile, down below, Nick's phone buzzed with the news he had been waiting for: the mysterious Miss Chloe had shown her face at last.

Nick rushed upstairs to where she was being held by security to await her escort. She was panicking, nearly in tears when Nick arrived. When the security guard that had stopped her handed her over to Nick, she tried to explain, "I don't want any trouble. I didn't know the pass had a name on it, I'll pay for a ticket, I will, I just . . . I just- I wanted to see him again."

Staring her down hard, Nick evaluated her with every ounce of expertise in people-reading he had developed over the years. She was definitely pretty, just as drop dead gorgeous as he remembered her being from the brief look he'd gotten of her at the club. In the daylight she looked younger, much more innocent and childish, especially with her teary eyed worry that she'd done something worth severe reprimand.

Interrogating her would have to wait. Until she had proven herself a terrible person, Nick was not the sort of guy who could just let a girl cry. "Well that's good then, because he wants to see you too."

Chloe perked up instantly, her expression a confused mix of worry and hope. Nick offered her his arm, saying, "Right this way, Princess."

Still hesitant, Chloe took Nick's arm and allowed him to lead her below the normal access levels of the arena. He took his special guest to Jason's break room and sat her down on a couch that faced a wide-screen TV broadcasting a live feed of the concert above. Chloe was instantly enraptured with watching Jason's performance.

Her outright awe made Nick pause. Certainly he'd seen fangirls react similarly, but her fascination wasn't the screaming crazy sort of adoration he was used to. It was a much softer awe, it was like a kid being given candy for the very first time. Chloe had begun to move to the beat unconsciously. She was swaying with an innate understanding of how the music breathed.

"He's something else, isn't he?" Nick asked quietly.

"I would never have guessed," Chloe told him. "I thought the whole pop genre had died out, at least in terms of serious musicians."

"Jason's considered the King for a reason," Nick told her.

Sitting down beside Chloe, Nick allowed her to watch the next song without interruption. He was observing her reactions. She was certainly excited about seeing Jason's performance, but she was just as certainly not fangirling over it.

"What the hell happened yesterday?" Nick asked eventually.

Chloe frowned, looking up at him. "What do you mean?"

"You went home with him last night, I saw you two leave," Nick explained.

Blushing furiously, Chloe said, "Yeah."

"Well?"

"What?" she asked, her blush deepening.

"What happened?" Nick pressed.

By this time Chloe was redder than Nick had ever seen a human being get. She could barely formulate words, let alone a coherent thought. Nick could almost have laughed. "Not the sex part, that I'll be able to get out of Jase eventually," he told her, not helping her embarrassment at all. "I mean what happened to make you leave? He said you weren't there when he woke up this morning, and you did _steal_ a VIP concert pass . . ."

"Yeah, I did . . ." Chloe replied entirely disheartened. "I just wanted to see him again."

"And you couldn't just stick around 'till sleeping beauty woke up?" Nick pointed out, "Or maybe you could have left a note or something, like a phone number perhaps?"

There was an accusatory note in Nick's voice and Chloe noticed it immediately. "I thought it was better to run away than be kicked out," she admitted quietly, shoulders sagging.

"Kicked out? What on earth would give you that idea?"

"Well . . . Jason Blake kind of has a rep," Chloe tried to explain, wondering why this was news to someone apparently close to Jason. "It's all over the news."

"I thought you weren't a fan."

Chloe shrugged. "There were some magazines out on the table when I woke up, the guy I'd just spent the night with was on the cover of most of them, I was curious. There were a dozen pictures of girls he'd walked through the same lobby I'd walked through last night, all of them had gone crawling out inconspicuously the next morning. I assumed I'd be next, so rather than waiting for him to kick me out, I . . . just left."

"You left?" Nick shook his head in disbelief. "Just like that?"

"Well, I did steal the pass first . . . and clean up a bit . . . but yeah," Chloe elaborated.

Still shaking his head, Nick grinned to himself. "Jason is going to kill Sheila for this."

"Sheila?"

"She's his management liaison, she's the one that convinced him that the publicity stunts of a playboy would be good for him in the long run," Nick explained.

Chloe frowned. "It was a publicity stunt," she breathed, fear and suspicion confirmed hanging heavy in her voice.

"No, not you," Nick hurried to correct, knowing how it must have sounded. "The others were, the girls in the magazines. You were real."

She didn't look even remotely convinced.

"I promise," Nick told her. He added, "You can ask him yourself in a few minutes, this is his break room after all. He'll be coming down after the next song."  
This had Chloe's whole attention. "What? No, I-"

"Relax, I'll do all the talking," Nick soothed. "Just tell me one thing: do you actually like him? Jason is my best friend and he's not that good with people . . . if you're not serious about him, you shouldn't play with him. I won't let him get hurt like that."

"I thought _he_ was the player here," Chloe retorted in a quiet stab at humor that made Nick smile briefly. Then she said, "Listen, I've only known him for like a day. It would be ridiculous for me to know exactly how I feel about him when I barely even _know_ him, but . . . last night was nice, really nice. It was the nicest time I've had in a _long_ time and I'd like nothing more than to talk with him again, to see if last night was as real as it felt."

When she looked away from the TV, she'd hardly even noticed that her attention had drifted there as she'd been talking, Chloe noticed Nick's soft smile. "That's a good enough answer for me," he told her, standing. "Stay here, okay? No more running off."

"I won't leave," she told him. At his look she added, "I promise."

At the door, Nick paused, "By the way, what's your full name?"

"Chloe Mathews," she told him.

"Nice to meet you Chloe Mathews, I'm Nick Fonterra," he replied before slipping out the door. He could only hope that Chloe would really stick around this time, at least long enough for Jason to get his meeting with her. Nick would approve of them if they decided to pursue a relationship, he decided as he waited for the platform bearing Jason to dip below the stage. Chloe was a pretty cool chick after all, and Jason could really use a girl in his life, one in a stable, non-publicity stunt sort of relationship.

As soon as Jason's mic had been silenced for his first break beneath the stage, Nick slung an arm around his shoulders. "The gods were smiling down on you today, my friend," he said, steering Jason towards his break room. "I have a present for you . . . and her name is Chloe."

Jason's head shot up. "You found her?"

"Well more like she found you," Nick explained. "I told you she'd be coming to the concert, _you_ didn't believe me. Also, it turns out that she's _not_ a gold-digger and she thinks you're a playboy so she ran off before you could kick her out and the whole thing is kind of ridiculous, but hey, that's the price of fame."

Jason had stopped really listening after the part when Nick had confirmed that Chloe had been found. Suddenly an eruption of butterflies worse than any of the moments he'd faced before going on stage hit him. The anxious swirl was tamped down a bit by Nick's assertion that Chloe thought he was a playboy, but it wasn't enough for him to open the door to his break room without trepidation.

There she was.

Sitting anxiously on the couch with her hair spilling over her shoulder, Chloe was just like he remembered her. The sweetness in her smile was especially familiar. "Hey," she said quietly, her eyes flicking up shyly to meet his.

Jason practically _lunged_ across the room, desperate to get her in his arms, to hold her close and prove to himself that she was really the Chloe he was missing so sorely. Her shape fit perfectly against his, just as he'd been imagining it to all day, her hair smelled bright and was soft against the skin of his face, and the way she pulled herself to him, like she was just as glad as he was that the person in her head seemed to be the person in her arms . . . Jason pulled back just far enough to stare into her eyes as he asked, "Why did you leave?"

"I didn't think you'd want me to stay."

"Why?"

Chloe shrugged. "You're famous. I thought I was just a night's entertainment, pretty and smart enough to be amusing, but not girlfriend material."

Laughing at the idiocy of her statement, Jason shared his own idiotic thoughts, "I thought you were just a gold-digger who'd seen I'm not really that well off and thought she'd quit while she was ahead."

"You really thought I was a gold-digger?" Chloe asked, smacking him firmly, but not so hard as to truly harm him.

"Not really," Jason whispered. "I just didn't know what else to think."

There was a quiet moment and then Chloe said with a smile, "You know, I've been thinking about you all day."

"That's funny, because I've been thinking about you," Jason responded.

Nick had to break up the moment. "Jase, you've got two minutes left. Get some water so you don't drop dead on all of us. Save the ooey-gooey-ness for _after_ the concert, okay?"

Reluctant to let Chloe go, Jason shifted his hold on her. "Will you still be here when I get back?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes," she promised, closing the gap between them quickly for a kiss. "I won't run away, I promise. I'll be watching your performance from here."

"Jase. One. Minute." Nick prompted, "Come on, we've got a show to put on here."

Jason gave Chloe another kiss, this one a bit more lingering than hers had been. Then he took a deep breath of her scent and made his way out to put on the show he had intended to all along. Now that he wasn't a distracted mess of a man, he could really wow his fans.

Throughout his performance, even though he was no longer horribly distracted by them, his thoughts were with Chloe. This time they were with her just below stage and more than a little of his performer's flair for sexiness was directed at getting her attention to be just as fixated on him as his was on her.

There would be plenty of time to sort everything out, but for now, all he could do was think about her, all day and all night, and every second in between.

~Finite~

* * *

**A/N:** Yay for summer assignments? Anyway this is a school-story, prompted from the idea of a Cinderella Story that was missing something important (in my case the Glass Slipper). As there are a ton of variations on the Cinderella Story . . . picking a specific one to base it on was impossible. And since I was utterly obsessed with 2PM's music video for A.D.T.O.Y . . . that factored in heavily as well. So I don't know where I should put this, but I've decided that I'd like to share it, and now here we are!

Reviews are always welcome!


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